I can confirm that 3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.1 from -proposed fixed the issue (in Boxes) for me, i.e. the dialog text is now wrapped and hence entirely legible.

A fix has recently been committed upstream: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/ddclient/-/commit/82d99d1dfb0fb002a15e081fdc7ccf8f96215dc6

After doing manual dconf cleanup, I’ve been unable to reproduce the issue. That’s since posting the previous comment, so a few days now. So I think I’ll hold off on reporting this upstream for the time being, but I’ll go ahead and do that if the problem still manifests itself.

Thanks again, Daniel.

I removed all but Desktop Icons, Ubuntu AppIndicators and Ubuntu Dock, rebooted and then reproduced the issue. Luckily I’ve found one way to reproduce this, albeit somewhat convoluted and still a bit unreliable, involving Synaptic and window tiling. And as it doesn’t seem to trigger the issue when using another account, I’m now working through settings differences between the two in hopes of finding something crucial.

While doing so, I did discover that dconf-editor is similarly affected:

    touko 12 16:09:32 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: WL: compositor bug: The compositor tried to use an object from one client in a 'wl_pointer.enter' for a different client.
    touko 12 16:09:32 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: WL: error in client communication (pid 12364)
    touko 12 16:09:32 saegusa dconf-editor[12364]: Error reading events from display: Katkennut putki
    touko 12 16:09:32 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:32 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:33 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:33 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: WL: compositor bug: The compositor tried to use an object from one client in a 'wl_pointer.enter' for a different client.
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa boinc[2098]: No protocol specified
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: WL: error in client communication (pid 12796)
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-terminal-[12796]: Error reading events from display: Katkennut putki
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa systemd[3569]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa systemd[3569]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa systemd[3569]: vte-spawn-da1941e8-60e5-48e5-868b-7348dd1158c7.scope: Succeeded.
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: Error adding children to desktop: this.layout.get_child_at(...) is null
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: Error adding children to desktop: this.layout.get_child_at(...) is null
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: Error adding children to desktop: this.layout.get_child_at(...) is null
    touko 12 16:09:34 saegusa gnome-shell[8208]: Error adding children to desktop: this.layout.get_child_at(...) is null

Looks like dconf-editor did not exit with FAILURE, but the dconf-editor window did disappear just as Gnome terminal’s did.

Happened again:

May 11 17:05:50 saegusa gnome-shell[3619]: WL: compositor bug: The compositor tried to use an object from one client in a ’wl_pointer.enter’ for a different client.
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa gnome-shell[3619]: WL: error in client communication (pid 5170)
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa gnome-terminal-[5170]: Error reading events from display: Katkennut putki
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa systemd[3544]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa systemd[3544]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Failed with result ’exit-code’.
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa systemd[3544]: vte-spawn-b269c64d-5376-49ec-83fc-9f4806ac4b30.scope: Succeeded.
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa systemd[3544]: vte-spawn-3294a176-7b32-4995-a11b-fe0fea8b07bc.scope: Succeeded.
May 11 17:05:50 saegusa systemd[3544]: vte-spawn-0b59afd0-1aed-4081-a7d1-801e7c405399.scope: Succeeded.
May 11 17:05:51 saegusa systemd[3544]: Started Application launched by gnome-shell.

But there’s still nothing in /var/crash, nor on the Error Tracker (aside from the aforementioned, unrelated crash from last week).

Turns out the online service was just a little slow to update, and there are in fact reports sent. But the only one post-20.04-upgrade is [1] from last week, which is a gnome-shell crash and IIRC, unrelated to the terminal issue here. It seemed to be triggered by something related to media files and Nautilus, and the logs from the time are different; I’m attaching them here. (I had separated gnome-shell logs out from the main syslog, but I’ve since reverted back to having everything in syslog.)

* [1] https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/26828e26-8fc9-11ea-acd0-fa163e983629

Thanks for the instructions, Daniel! I found no crash files either locally or online, so I’ve implemented the workaround now, and will try to trigger the crash again.

For future reference, this was probably Ubuntu bug #1875558 (”libproxy1-plugin-gsettings triggers a lot of warnings”).

Since upgrading to 20.04 and switching to Wayland, Gnome terminal occasionally crashes. I interpret the corresponding logs to mean that it’s actually Wayland that fails to do something in the background, which then takes down Gnome terminal:

touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa gnome-shell[4227]: WL: compositor bug: The compositor tried to use an object from one client in a 'wl_pointer.enter' for a different client.
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa gnome-shell[4227]: WL: error in client communication (pid 11639)
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa gnome-terminal-[11639]: Error reading events from display: Katkennut putki
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa systemd[4153]: vte-spawn-bbca1723-5987-4ccf-98cb-3389ad05641e.scope: Succeeded.
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa systemd[4153]: vte-spawn-fbe02208-95df-4cf4-bfbe-fffc71d6bc7e.scope: Succeeded.
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa systemd[4153]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
touko 08 11:35:16 saegusa systemd[4153]: gnome-terminal-server.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

I have yet to nail down the precise circumstances, as this has (so far) been somewhat rare, having occurred perhaps once or twice a week.

Since the log mentions pointer, I should perhaps mention that I’ve set `org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences` > `focus-mode` to `mouse`. Gnome terminal also exhibits other misbehaviour wrt. to this, occasionally refusing to get focus, or alternatively losing the focus, despite mouse cursor being over the terminal window.

Boinc-client logs ”No protocol specified” incessantly, twice every second on my setup.

    -- Logs begin at Wed 2020-03-25 14:45:19 EET, end at Fri 2020-05-01 17:14:34 EEST. --
    touko 01 00:00:00 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:00 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:01 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:01 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:02 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:02 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:03 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:03 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:04 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:04 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:05 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:05 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 00:00:06 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified

…and on and on…

    touko 01 17:14:54 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:55 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:55 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:56 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:56 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:57 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:57 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:58 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:58 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:59 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:14:59 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:00 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:00 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:01 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:01 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:02 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified
    touko 01 17:15:02 saegusa boinc[2083]: No protocol specified